Meaning of Shrove Tuesday lost

Everybody knows that Shrove Tuesday is Pancake Day, but Catholic Church leaders are concerned that many people do not understand the origins of the day.

Also known as Mardi Gras (or Fat Tuesday, when translated using Google Translate), Shrove Tuesday is the eve of Lent, an important time in the Catholic Calendar, more important even than Christmas to the devout. Lent is all about abstinence, as even the heathens know, and Shrove Tuesday is all about fattening up ahead of fasting or abandoning guilty pleasures, including butter, flour, milk and eggs - the ingredients of pancakes. Not that anybody does that any more, even the Pope has been known to carry on eating five square meals a day during Lent. Instead of penance, Lent is now about not eating cakes or drinking Budweiser instead of beer.

Arch Cardinal Deuteronomy Bosch is fed up with the lack of piety during this most holy of periods.

"How can giving up DIY bring people closer to God?" asks Bosch. "How can eating pancakes be suitable preparation for a period of fasting? The bloody things don't fill you up, no matter how many you eat."

Bosch is even more livid about pancake mixes. "During lent, there should be no eggs or butter, which is why we use it up in pancakes, so I decree that these 'shake-and-bake' mixes for pancake are the devils work! And to make matters worse, all our local supermarkets always, and I mean ALWAYS run out ahead of pancake day, so I have to make my own! Does anybody know where I can get hold of some flour?"

Make IainB's day - give this story five thumbs-up (there's no need to register, the thumbs are just down there!)

More fake news stories

The former corpse and monarch is set to involve himself in the 21st Century by joining various social media.
The king was resurrected by royalist necromancers in 2012 but has maintained a low profile since his return to life.
Richard III was ki...

London- Britney Spears traveled to Britain to address the House of Commons to complain about the structure of the British government.
Spears complains that England is not a true democracy but a false democracy.
"After reading excerpt from Aris...

The Dalai Lama may be a man of few possessions™, but he's hoping to get the better of Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby in a very material manner; while also sticking up for the faithful (at least, the right kind of faithful, anyway).
Attendi...

The Prime Minister has announced plans to introduce the wearing of blindfolds in supermarkets for all benefit claimants which will be introduced of the Tories win the next General Election in May.
The new requirement will apply to anyone claiming...

A group once affiliated with ISIS has broken off and formed a splinter faction, claiming as their primary goal the "total, rapid modernization of the Levant", promising also an immediate, all out " blitz" of "humanist secularization" and complete and...

Somerset Levels, UK - A massive arsenal of IRA weapons including AK-47s, MI6 assault rifles and a Sherman tank has been found by teenagers at the bottom of a British river bed.
13 year-olds Bob Piranna and Warren Nuckles were magnet-fishing on th...

Chancellor George Osborne has shaken David Cameroon by resigning over the input of tax evaders being siphoned to The Tory Party.
'I've had enough' he declared from the steps of 11 Downing Street, 'When a political party is financed by the proceeds...

(London) - Numerous sources have now independently confirmed that Rupert Murdoch will marry Sarah Palin this September in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
While Mr. Murdoch's divorce from Wendi Deng in 2013 was front-page news worldwide, few were aw...